June 14, 2010

Sacramento Computer Data Snafu Becomes More... Snafu-y

In our last report (free reg. req.) on the Sacramento County Superior Court computer saga, we noted that court leaders hadn’t explained why they didn’t shutter computer kiosks until June 4 given that they first learned about the system’s confidentiality breach (free reg. req.) on May 24.

Today, Presiding Judge Steve White offered an explanation.

When a probate attorney first noticed that the computer system was allowing public access to certain sensitive documents on May 24, a “fix-it” report was sent to the court’s technicians. Those technicians, however, were occupied with a different problem; computers were only showing three cases on law-and-motion calendars when judges in those departments knew of several dozen matters awaiting action, White said.

When technicians discovered late on June 3 that the confidentiality breach was more pervasive than originally thought, the decision was made to close the system to the public, White said.

Court leaders continue to blame the breach on a May 24 update of the Court Case Management System installed by the Administrative Office of the Courts and its vendor, Deloitte Consulting.

At first, an AOC spokesman said (free reg. req.) a court-installed scanning application was the source of the breach. Later he backed off that statement in a letter to The Recorder. On Monday Philip Carrizosa said it was inaccurate to solely blame the CCMS update, telling the Sacramento Bee that “if our update had been the only cause, then the same problem would have occurred with other courts that use the same version of CCMS as Sacramento.”

White said other courts didn’t suffer the same problems because Sacramento is the only remotely-hosted computer user that has probate kiosks and public document viewers.